Baseball Talk Philadelphia

April 16, 2016

Another night, another lopsided loss for the all of a sudden slumping Phillies.

Since Vince Velasquez's 16-strikeout masterpiece, the Phillies pitching staff has been anything but stellar. Actually, just good would be an upgrade. Aaron Nola surrendered a career high seven runs in the Nationals 8-1 win over the Phillies Saturday night at Citizens Banks Park. Cameron Rupp provided the Phillies only run with a solo home run in the fifth inning of Max Scherzer.

Per Todd Zolecki of MLB.com the Phillies tied a franchise record by failing to get 10 hits in a game in first 12 games. Also opened 1967 with 12-game double-digit hitless streak.

Bryce Harper hit his fifth home run of the season. Harper now has six homers and 10 RBI in his last six games at Citizens Bank Park.

Nola threw 19 pitches in the first inning and the Nationals teed off scoring three runs including a Daniel Murphy RBI triple. Harper hit a sacrifice fly that Darin Ruf dropped on the transfer allowing Michael Taylor to tag and score from third base.

Scherzer, at one point, retired 11 straight Phillies hitters en route to his second win of the season. Scherzer struck out seven while walking only one in seven innings of work. Scherzer helped his own cause with a 2-run double in the fourth inning off Nola.

Chris Heisey took James Russell deep in the top of the ninth for a pinch-hit home run, his first of the season. Other than Heisey's homer the Phillies bullpen looked rather flawless.

Cedric Hunter continues to be as close to an automatic out as one can be going 0-for-3 with two strikeouts, keeping his average to mere .091. The Phillies one through five hitters went a combined 1-for-18 and seven strikeouts. Ruf has the lowest batting average on the Phillies at .083, and had a costly error in the very first inning of the game.

Despite Ryan Howard's power numbers being up, his average is rapidly declining. With his 0-for-4 evening he's now batting .194 on the season. Still, his .790 OPS is good for third on the team.

The Phillies fall to 5-7 which is still good for second place in the National League East.

Charlie Morton will look to salvage the series for the Phillies as they'll try to avoid the sweep against Gio Gonzalez Sunday afternoon.

April 09, 2016

It surely wasn't pretty but the Phillies avoided ugly history and scrapped together a 1-0 win over the New York Mets. With this win, the Phillies avoided their first 0-5 start in 82 years.

Vince Velasquez tossed six shutout innings earning his first win in his first start as a Phillie. Ryan Howard gave the Phillies their lone run with his first homer of the season. Another positive sign of this win was the Phillies bullpen. Once Velasquez exited the game after six electrifying innings, the bullpen tossed four lockdown innings with Jenmar Gomez getting the save, his first as a Phillie.

On a bitterly cold night inside Citi Field, the story of the night was Velasquez. He ran into some trouble early on locating his pitches after throwing 26 pitches in the first inning, however, somehow not surrendering a run. Velasquez threw 99 pitches with 63 being strikes and nine strikeouts. There were points in the game where he looked simply dominant. His fastball had gas touching 95mph behind it and his breaking stuff made a few Mets hitters look silly.

To put Velasquez's stellar performance into more perspective; his nine strikeouts are the most for a pitcher in his Phillies debut since Roy Halladay fanned nine back in 2010.

If the first four games of the season told us anything it's to not bank on the bullpen. Luckily, Saturday night agains the Mets the Phillies bullpen arms buckled up and got the final nine outs. Hector Nerris, Daniel Stumpf and David Hernandez get the first six, and Gomez ended it with the final three. The bullpen threw a total of 35 pitches, with 18 being for strikes.

The only run of the ballgame came off the bat of Ryan Howard. Howard took Bartolo Colon deep for an opposite field home run in the top half of the fifth inning. It was Howard's second on the young campaign and his 45 HR for his career agains the Mets. Howard also has 130 RBI in 162 career games against their division rivals.

Howard's home run actually broke Colon's streak of retiring 12 of the first 13 batters he faced.

Cesar Hernandez and Cameron Rupp were the only Phillies who collected multiple hits on the night. Four of the Phillies eight hits came off the bats of those two guys. Freddy Galvis, Odubel Herrera, Maikel Franco, and Cedric Hunter went a combined 2-for-15 with four strikeouts.

For the Mets, Yoenis Cespedes went 0-for-4 making him 2-for-16 this season with seven strikeouts. The Mets top four hitters went 2-for-15 with seven strikeouts. Asdrubal Cabrera collected the two hits and Lucas Duda grabbed the third and final Met hit of the evening.

On a night of firsts, the Phillies won the battles. With Matt Harvey scheduled to take the stump Sunday afternoon, the Phillies will have their work cut out for them. Jeremy Hellickson will take the hill for Pete Mackanin Sunday as he will look for his second consecutive quality start.

November 17, 2015

He was a Rule 5 pickup by the Texas Rangers in 2008. He was being developed as a second baseman and ended up playing nearly his entire stay in the minor leagues between second base and shortstop.

Fast forward to 2015 and Odubel Herrera is of the main centerpieces in the rebuild of the Philadelphia Phillies.

Unlike Cody Asche, who's move from third base to the outfield has been deemed a failure, Herrera's transition to centerfield has been nothing short of a success. Yes, he doesn't take the best routes on fly balls which was highlighted on Cole Hamels' no-hitter in Chicago against the Cubs, but he makes up for all his inefficiencies with his speed and decisive first step off the bat.

Herrera was moved to centerfield because the Phillies believed he was a better version of Ben Revere, who also had lackluster arm-strength (being kind) and also took dreadful routes on fly-balls. All in all, the Phils knew they couldn't get worse results by moving Herrera to center and Revere to left.

While Herrera's first few weeks in the outfield were a bit hectic at times, he picked up the position rather smoothly. He became quite an asset for Ryne Sandberg/Pete Mackanin throughout the entire season.

Herrera's defensive numbers were quite telling when dug into deeper. 'El Torito' ranked 8th among all major league centerfielders in fWAR and 9th in bWAR. Since 2002, fWAR also calculates defensive stats.

"For position players, the largest point of contention comes in measuring defense and estimating the positional adjustment. Our measures of both are more uncertain than our measures of offense, so players who get a good amount of their value through their defensive ratings likely have more uncertainty around their WAR value than players who have defensive value closer to average. This does not mean that WAR is wrong or biased, but rather that it is not yet capable of perfect accuracy and should be used as such."

It's certain that 2016 will be another building block for Herrera defensively. He has the elite abilities. Now he just has to practice and work on gaining that needed experience to make himself an elite outfielder in this league. Something that doesn't come around too often in centerfield.

There's obvious concerns surrounding Herrera's glove. But fans cannot expect gold glove success overnight coming from a kid who was brought up in the minor league system as a middle-infielder, it's not fair to judge yet.

Shane Victorino wasn't overnight success in centerfield. And Phillies fans should remember that. There were many times where people questioned whether or not Victorino was worth being an everyday player if his glove and decision making didn't improve in the outfield. He worked on it vigorously and became one of the most beloved outfielders in franchise history.

At the end of the day, Herrera CAN become a gold glove type outfielder. But it won't be now. But remember, he's almost 24.

Offensively, Herrera was tremendous. One sabermetric stat revealed just how effective Herrera was in 2015. Of the 141 qualified hitters in MLB, Herrera produced the highest BABIP at .387. Higher than the AL batting champion Miguel Cabrera and NL MVP candidate Paul Goldschmidt.

BABIP (Batting average on balls in play) measures how many of a batter’s balls in play go for hits, or how many balls in play against a pitcher go for hits. This stat excludes long balls.

Herrera's 2015 slash line was mightily impressive for a Rule 5 rookie, .297/.344/.418/.762. Herrera's eight homers are also nothing to scoff at. One stat we can harp on are his 28 walks. The Phils will look to Herrera to be the centerpiece at the top of the batting order. The base on ball totals need to rise. That eye comes with experience and maturity. Expect the walk number to rise in 2016.

Stealing bases seemed to be a struggle for Herrera last season swiping 16 bases in 24 attempts. With his speed he should easily be counted upon to steal over 20-25 bases. He'll most definitely see a rise in chances in the coming season being a leadoff hitter.

'El Torito' is without a doubt a focal point of the Phillies rebuilding stage. His team leading WAR of 3.9 in 2015 proves that as GM Matt Klentak works on leading a resurgence to this club, Herrera will have to be a leader moving forward. Does he have that ability? Undoubtedly.

Herrera wears his emotions on his sleeve, we saw that in HD last season. Now, he needs to grow up as a baseball player and avoid the proverbial sophomore slump that seems to plague most players not named Mike Trout.

I am a firm believer in Herrera being one of the core young cats who can lead this franchise back to its winning ways. Do I think it'll be something that happens in 2016? Maybe. All of the above factors need to progress. His defense needs to evolve upward, his baserunning skills need to improve immediately, and his slash line should either stay the same or slant even more up.

Nonetheless, Klentak is a firm believer that through the Phils already plentiful farm system, free agency, and the international market, his team should be back in World Series contention quicker than most fans initially believed.

"What I've learned from the Royals is there's no one way to do it. The way that they won the last couple years has been unique, relative to how teams have built over the last ... decade or so. And that's encouraging, right? That works for them. The Mets' style worked for them this year. The Cubs' style is working, the Astros' [style] -- again, a very different style that's working for them. That's very positive.

In Zolecki's piece Klentak said that the Phillies could find success soon...if they do it right:

"It can turn on a dime if you're disciplined, if you're organized. If players are developing and you're accurate in the projections of when those guys are going to reach their ceilings or start to achieve at the big league level, it can turn quickly. But you have to be disciplined. You have to be prepared for when that day comes."

As mentioned earlier, the international market will be a huge utility for Klentak and the Phillies future. Since the Phils had the worst record in MLB in 2015 they will have the biggest international signing-bonus pool next summer.

There's a plethora of talent in places like Venezuela and the Dominican Republic, just ask the Chicago Cubs. Oh, by the way, Maikel Franco was a Dominican diamond the Phils signed for a $100,000 signing bonus back in 2010. Steal.

"As I've said before, I don't like to operate in absolutes," Klentak said. "But it is paramount that we take advantage of situations like that to bring talent into our system.

“Understanding that when you're talking about kids at that age, from the Dominican Republic, from Venezuela, it's going to take a long time for a lot of those players to get there. But we still have to do that.

We have to create waves of players that will feed this team three, four, five, six, 10 years down the line, because we don't know where we'll be three, four, five, six, 10 years down the line. We need to make sure we've got steady waves of players coming, and that's true of the Draft. It's really true of the few areas that are still available to us to bring in players."

Analytics are now top priority for an organization who were for the longest time considered dinosaurs in terms of how they scouted and reviewed statistics and analytics.

Fans can call it ‘Moneyball’ all they want but this is the atmosphere for Major League Baseball now. The new normal. For the Phillies, it’s about playing catch-up as fast as they can and Klentak is seemingly the right man to expedite the process.

Klentak and manager Pete Mackanin have plenty of top prospects at their disposal. J.P. Crawford, Jake Thompson, Nick Williams, Andrew Knapp, and Jorge Alfaro just to name a few.

For those who pay attention to Baseball America (it’s my baseball Bible), they ranked Crawford, Williams, and Thompson as the Phils top three prospects heading into the 2016 season. All three players shined bright in Double A last season and will surely get invites to Spring Training in Clearwater, FL.

Speaking of Spring Training, there’s no doubt that the biggest storylines will be who of the big name prospects will make the final 40-man roster in April. Crawford, Williams, and Thompson should see significant playing time for the Phillies in 2016, as they should.

Crawford, 20, is the big one. The shortstop hit .265 with five homers, 34 RBIs and a .354 on-base percentage in 86 games at Double A Reading in 2015. He had 49 walks and struck out just 45 times. He then went on to hit .379 (11 for 29) with seven walks in eight games in the Eastern League playoffs. He was knocked out of the Arizona Fall League after five games by a thumb injury but is said to be ready to go for Spring Training.

Freddy Galvis is slated to be the starting shortstop heading into the 2016 season, however, it be smart of the Phillies to give Crawford a serious look at camp. Crawford will take over the shortstop position full-time in 2017 if all goes well, but 2016 might just be a ‘look and see’ trial.

Mackanin has yet to inform Klentak which prospects he’s like to see invited to camp. The Phillies, for the first time in almost a decade, have their pick of the litter in terms of who to shoot up to the main club come Opening Day.

For argument sake, even if all three of the mentioned studs don’t make the Phils final roster, one could certainly assume all three will see some time in a Phils uniform by June or July, at the latest.

The Phillies could also extend an invite to their other top catching prospect, Andrew Knapp. Knapp won the Paul Owens Award as the organization’s top minor-league player in 2015. That speaks volumes.

This franchise and fan base is on the verge of being invigorated with great baseball again. The only problem with it all is it’s all based on PROSPECTS. Which we all know in pro sports are no guarantees.

Add Aaron Nola, Franco, Cesar Hernandex, and Odubel Herrera to this mix and the Phillies could see themselves right back in the contender mix within the next 2-3 years. The next half decade could provide some of the most exciting baseball in Philadelphia we’ve ever seen. All we’ll need now is another parade.